Don't Turn On the Lights
by haunt-the-stars
Summary: People call Dick a lot of things. Player, whore, womanizer, pretty boy, slut. The only word he can think of is broken. Coping Series.


**A/N: hello. This is a sort of character study on Dick/a look at his relationship with sex, inspired by Avril Lavigne's "Give You What You Like". It's obviously not part of YJ, but in the regular comicverse Dick grows up to...well, have a lot of sex. I wanted to delve into that a little.**

 **Rated T for language, angst, and non-explicit descriptions of sex.**

 **Trigger warnings for vague/brief mentions of suicide, self-harm, and consent issues**

 **disclaimer: i own nothingnothingnothing aight**

He starts to feel it in a sort of pattern, the tides of anxiety and loneliness and hurt washing in _hunger_ , a wild, primal need that tears at his chest.

It comes again and again, and in time he has it memorized like an old favorite song. A slamming door or a dead phone line or the shouting voice of another betrayal leads to the sound of an empty bottle falling out of his trembling fingers and cracking, and then that leads to his own pathetic, slurred whisper in a seedy club as he gives his body for comfort.

It's only once the moaning and gasping reach his ears that he fully realizes he's _doing it again_ , and it's only once he hears his own sobs in an empty bed the next morning that he realizes he doesn't care.

And all he wants is to forget.

He feels dirty and gross and _used_ even though really, he can't tell who's the user. He knows he walks into those damn clubs intending to drink and maybe dance and definitely not end up screwing someone. He knows he sits down and orders something and nine times out of ten, someone approaches him first, winks and compliments him or starts a conversation. He knows by that point he's still _totally planning on giving his number and going home_ , but then a girl will stroke his cheek or a guy will run a thumb over his wrist and just like that, he's a goner. He knows sometimes he'll murmur, "I'm not sure" or "I shouldn't" or even _"no"_ as a warm body grinds up against him, and he knows he's been kissed or cuddled into submission more than a handful of times. He knows he's obeyed the every whim of anyone who, after a few endeavors, has dared to give him the little words he craves so badly. He knows he's drunk on _lonely_ and _vodka_ all at once and the partners he tumbles into bed with can see that. They use it. They use him.

But it's a trade. What he wants for what someone else likes, a cuddle for a kiss, an _I love you_ for a _fuck me harder_.

And he's not quite sure if it's fair to do a person like a drug, to bury his face against sweaty skin and hide from the image of his first Thanksgiving without Bruce, or the fourth call that Wally doesn't pick up, or the dying flowers Barbara might as well have left at his feet. It doesn't feel fair. He feels manipulative. That is, until someone spoons up to him and calls him _mine_ and then it all feels like _love_ because no one ever taught him what love is, and it's much easier to just attach it to fucking than it is to work through the tangled, fragile web in his heart. He'll never have real love anyway, not the kind that other people go moon-eyed talking about or the kind that _makesfathersadopttheirdamnsons_ so he gets what he wants in his own sickening way and tries to pretend he has an ounce of control over it.

A very verbal man calls him a slut with daddy issues one night, and he freezes for a second, then wraps his legs around the guy's neck and tells him he likes it rough. He's covered in bruises the next morning.

Just as with any other toxic relationship, it started innocent. Fourteen was a little young to lose his virginity, and nearly-seventeen was a little old for the first girl to coax him into bed, but at the end of the night, he didn't regret it. They were supposed to be studying, and he wasn't supposed to start crying when she asked what it was like being Bruce's kid, and he wasn't supposed to spill about how badly he missed the circus where everyone loved him and about how lonely he was at school and about all of the weak spots Bruce kicked in their screaming match that day, and she wasn't supposed to kiss away his tears and push him back against her bed and start taking off his clothes, and he wasn't supposed to love the feeling of her fingers brushing against his neck, and she wasn't supposed to put little kisses all over him while she convinced him to go further but _god_ , all he could think through the next sloppy half-hour was that he was _supposed_ to be tangled up with her, hot and lost in this new feeling of being _wanted_.

He had never realized how starved he was.

Somehow, he never ended up doing it just because he wanted to throughout his teenage years. It was always some sort of response or reflex, even as he got older and moved out and the list of people he'd been with grew and grew and grew. Intimacy and pain twisted together tighter until he couldn't separate the two, until his libido had a trigger word and it was _goodbye_ , until he started to gravitate towards people who hurt him. He doesn't know what sex is anymore - to him it's hurt and pleasure mixed up with comfort and shame and distraction, and it's how he loves, but it doesn't take a detective to figure out that it's not supposed to feel like that. You're supposed to do it for the right reasons, and he's almost positive he doesn't.

He does it for love, is what he keeps saying to himself. He does it because he can, is what he tells the nibbles in his ears asking _why the gossip says he's such a naughty whore_. Because he's hot, and he's skilled with his body, and it feels good...and it makes him feel _alive_ again and he's touch-deprived out of his _mind_ and he's fucked-up and traumatized and he needs it, _god_ , he _needs_ it because it's a coping mechanism and it keeps him from giving in to grimmer temptations on bad nights.

When those nights are heavy in his veins, weighing him down to places that scare him, his first speed-dial number always seems to call to him. Then it's a tug-of-war, his father or a stranger, the root of the wound or a band-aid to put over it, someone who knows him inside out or someone who doesn't at all, someone who could talk him down from the ledge once and for all or someone who could kiss it all away, someone who will probably be too busy or someone who will give him the night.

The latter always wins, and he's shuffling to kick pill bottles or blades under his bed when he returns to his room with someone attached to his waist. He pats himself on the back later, as if letting hickeys wrap around his throat instead of a noose is something admirable. As if he's been proactive and gotten better. As if he's actually healing and not just tying a tourniquet. As if this is _healthy_.

No, his old teenage habits of scissors and bloodshed were unhealthy. They scared people, they inconvenienced people. This...is just a trade.

Whoring himself out for love isn't so bad.

If he really wanted _love_ , a sinking feeling tells him, he'd pick up his phone instead of a condom and stop pulling darkness and starry lust over his eyes. This _isn't_ love, dammit, and bouncing between orgasms and nervous breakdowns is no way to live.

But he can't help it, can't resist the fantasy that he'll wake up and someone will have stayed, will have wrapped their arms around him and promised to never abandon him. The scene reels in his head constantly, that this time out of countless others will be the time that he wakes up feeling loved.

 _Maybe someday._


End file.
